"Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below."
ANON.
The wave of enthusiasm caused by the War swept even Fanny into its
whirlpool of emotion. For several days she haunted the streets,
following now this crowd, now that; buying innumerable papers, singing
patriotic songs, cheering the soldiers as they passed. She wanted to
dash out into the road, to throw her arms round the young soldiers and
to kiss them, she was for the time being passionately in love with them.
It was her one pathetic and rather mistaken method of expressing the
patriotism which surged up in her. She could not have explained this
sensation, she only knew that something was so stirred within her that
she wanted to give--to give of her very best to these men who symbolized
the spirit of the country to her. Poor, hot-hearted little Fanny; she
and a great many like her came in for a good deal of blame during the
days that followed, yet the instinct which drove them was the same that
prompted the boys to enlist. If Fanny had been a man she would have
been one of the first at the recruiting station. So submerged was she in
her new excitement that Joan and Dick in their trouble slipped entirely
out of her mind, only to come back, with the knowledge that she had
failed to do anything to help, when, on coming back one afternoon to
Montague Square, she saw Mabel standing on the steps of No. 6. To be
correct, Mabel had just finished talking to Mrs. Carew and was turning
away. Fanny hastened her walk to a run and caught the other up just as
she left the step.
"You were asking to see Joan, Miss Rutherford," she panted. "Won't you
come in and let me tell you about her?"
Mabel had hardly recognized her. Fanny, dressed up in her best to meet
Joan's possible future relations, and Fanny in her London garments,
which consisted of a very tight dress slit up to well within sight of
her knee, and a rakish little hat, were two very different people. And
whereas the Fanny of Sevenoaks had been a little vulgar but most
undeniably pretty, this Fanny was absolutely impossible--the kind of
person one hardly liked to be seen talking to. Yet there was something
in the girl's face, the frank appeal of her eyes, perhaps, that held
Mabel against her will.
"The woman tells me that Miss Rutherford has left," she spoke stiffly.
"I was really only going to call upon her."
"Yes, I know she's gone," Fanny nodded, "back to her people. But there
is something between her and your brother that awfully badly wants to be
explained. Won't you come in and let me tell you? Oh, do, please do."
She had caught hold of the other's sleeve and was practically leading
her back up the steps. Mabel had not seen Dick since he had left
Sevenoaks. He had written a note to their hotel saying he was most
awfully busy, his application for service had been accepted, but pending
his being attached to any unit he was putting in the time examining
recruits. He had not mentioned Joan, Mabel had noticed that; still she
had promised to call and make it up with the girl, and Mabel was a
person who always religiously kept her promises. But if there had been
any disagreement, as Fanny's anxiety to explain showed, then surely it
was so much the better. Here and now she would wash her hands of the
affair and start hoping once again for something better for Dick.
Fanny had opened the door by this time and had led the way inside. "My
room is three flights up," she said. "Will you mind that? Also it is
probably dreadfully untidy. It generally is."
This was where Mabel, following the wise guidance of her head, ought to
have said: "I am not coming, I really haven't time," or some excuse of
that sort. Instead she stepped meekly inside and followed the girl
upstairs. Perhaps some memory of Dick's face as he had spoken of Joan
prompted her, or perhaps it was just because she felt that in some small
way she owed Joan a reparation.
Fanny's room was certainly untidy. Every chair was occupied by an
assortment of clothes, for before she had gone out that morning Fanny
had had a rummage for a special pair of silk stockings that were the
pride of her heart. She bundled most of the garments on to the bed and
wheeled forward the armchair for Mabel to sit in.
"I never can keep tidy," she acknowledged. "It used to make Joan fair
sick when we shared rooms on tour. Joan is so different from me."
Suddenly she threw aside pretence and dropped down on her knees before
the armchair, squatting back on her heels to look at Mabel. "That is
what I do want you to understand," she said, earnestly. "Joan is as
different to me as soap to dirt. She is a lady, you probably saw that; I
am not. She is good; I don't suppose I ever have been. She is clean all
through, and she loves your brother so much that she wanted to break her
heart to keep him happy." She looked down at her hands for a second,
then up again quickly. "I'll tell you, it won't do any harm. Mind you,
usually, I say a secret is a secret though I mayn't look the sort that
can keep one. Joan told me about it at the beginning when I chaffed her
about his loving her; and he does, you know he does. It seems that when
she first came to London she had funny ideas in her head--innocent, I
should call it, and sort of inclined to trust men--anyway, she lived
with some man and there was to have been a baby," she brought the
information out with a sort of gasp.
"I knew that," Mabel answered, "and because of it I tried to persuade my
brother not to marry her."
"I suppose it is only natural you should," Fanny admitted, "though to me
it seems that when a woman has a baby like that, she pays for all the
fun that went before." She threw back her head a little and laughed.
"Oh, I'm not moral, I know that, but Joan is, that's what I want you to
understand. Anyway, Joan left the man, or he left her, which is more
likely, and the baby was never born. Joan was run over in the street one
day and was ill in hospital for a month. That was what Joan came up
against," she went on, "when she fell in love with your brother. Tell
him, I said, it won't make a pin's worth of difference to his love--and
it wouldn't. But Joan did not believe me, she had learned to be afraid
of good people, some of them had been real nasty to her, and she was
afraid."
"She need not have been," Mabel said. The girl was so earnest in the
defence of her friend that one could not help liking her. "Dick knew
about it all the time."
Fanny nodded. "Yes, Joan told me that on the day after he had been here.
It would have been fairer if he had said so from the beginning. You
see," she leant forward, most intense in her explanation, "Joan thought,
and thought and thought, till she was really silly with thinking. He had
told her he was coming here on Monday to ask her to marry him, and she
loved him. I should have held my tongue about things, or whispered them
to him as I lay in his arms, holding on to him so that he could not
push me away, but Joan isn't my sort. She just couldn't bear to tell
him, I guess she was afraid to see his face alter and grow hard. Do you
blame her because she was afraid? I don't really know the rest of the
story," she finished, "because I was away, but I think Joan got hold of
the silly notion that the best thing to do was to have another man
hanging about here when Dr. Grant called. She thought it would make him
angry, and that he would change his mind about wanting to marry her on
the spot. And she pretty well succeeded. I had just got back and was
standing in the hall, when Dr. Grant got back from her room and went
out. He did not notice me, his face was set white and stern like
people's faces are when they have just had to shoot a dog they loved.
The other man meant nothing to her, nothing; why she hasn't even seen
him for months, and she never liked him. Oh, can't you explain to your
brother, he would listen to you." She put her hand on Mabel's knee in
her earnestness and pulled herself a little nearer. "It's breaking both
their hearts, and it's all such a silly mistake."
"Are you not asking rather a lot from me?" Mabel said quietly; she met
the other's eyes frankly. "Putting aside all ideas, moral or immoral,
don't you understand that it is only natural that I should want my
brother to marry some girl who had not been through all that Miss
Rutherford has?"
The quick tears sprang to Fanny's eyes. "If he loves her," she claimed,
"is not that all that matters?"
"He may love again," Mabel reminded her.
Fanny withdrew her hand and stayed quiet, looking down at the ground,
blinking back her tears. "You won't help," she said presently. "I see
what you mean, it doesn't matter to you what happens to her." She lifted
her head defiantly and sprang to her feet. "Well, it doesn't matter, not
very much. I believe in love more than you do, it seems, for I do not
believe that your brother will love again, and sooner or later he will
come back to her." She paused in her declamation and glanced at Mabel.
"Is he going to the War?" she asked quickly.
"Yes," Mabel assented; she had stood up too and was drawing on her
gloves. "He may go at any moment, as soon as they need him. You think I
am awfully hard," she went on; "perhaps I am. Dick means a lot to me; if
I find that this is breaking his heart I will tell him, will you believe
that? But if he can find happiness elsewhere I shall be glad, that is
all."
Fanny huddled herself up in the armchair and did a good cry after she
had gone. Joan's thread of happiness seemed more tangled than ever; her
efforts to undo the knots had not been very successful. There was only
her belief in the strength of Dick's love to fall back on, and love--as
Fanny knew from her own experience--is sometimes only a weathercock in
disguise, blown this way and that by the winds of fate.
The night post brought a letter from Joan. It was written on black-edged
notepaper:
"DEAR FANNY,
"Aunt Janet is dead. She died the night after I got here. The
nurse says it was the joy of seeing me again that killed her.
She was glad to have me back, I read that in her eyes, and it
is the one fact that helps me to face things. Death stands
between us now, yet we are closer to each other than we have
been these last two years. And she loved me all the time,
Fanny; sometimes it seems as if love could be very
unforgiving. I must stay on down here for the time being;
Uncle John needs someone, and he is content that it should be
me. The War overhangs and overshadows everything, and it is
going to be a hard winter for us all. I suppose he hasn't been
back" (Fanny knew who was meant by "he") "to see me. It's
stupid of me to ask, but hope is so horribly hard to kill.
"Yours ever,
"JOAN."
Fanny wrote in answer that evening, but she made no mention of Mabel's
visit. "Dr. Grant has joined, I hear," she put rather vaguely. "But of
course one knew he would. All the decent men are going. London is just
too wonderful, honey, I can't keep out of the streets. All day there are
soldiers going past; I love them all, with a sort of love that makes you
feel you want to be good, and gives you a lump in your throat. They say
we have already sent thousands of men to Belgium, though there has not
been a word about it in the papers, but I met a poor woman in the crowd
to-day who had just said good-bye to her son. I wish I had got a son,
only, of course, he would not be old enough to fight, would he? Write me
sometimes, honey, and don't lose heart. Things will come all right for
you in the end, I sort of know they will."
To Joan her letter brought very little comfort despite its last
sentence. Dick had joined; it did not matter how Fanny had come by the
news, Joan never doubted its truth. He would be among the first to go,
that she had always known, but would he make no sign, hold out no hand,
before he left? The War was shaking down barriers, bringing together
families who perhaps had not been on speaking terms for years, knitting
up old friendships. Would he not give her some chance to explain, to set
herself right in his eyes? That was all she asked for; not that he
should love her again, but just that they should be friends, before he
went out into the darkness of a war to which so many were to go and so
few return.